


In The Moments After

by MarigoldWritesThings



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo Deserved Better, Ben Solo Lives, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), I fixed TROS, Light Angst, One Shot, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Sad with a Happy Ending, Soft Ben Solo, That's Not How The Force Works, The Force Ships It, Tros fix-it, but only because she cares so much, i promise there is a happy ending, starts really sad, we all deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22130791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarigoldWritesThings/pseuds/MarigoldWritesThings
Summary: “Be with me,” her voice barely hers. “Be with me, Ben. You came back before. You came. You came for me. Be with me.”***I fixed the TROS ending because it had to be done.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 90





	In The Moments After

Rey feels their bond not shatter but fizzle, tremble delicately around the edges of thought, fragile whisper where moments before it was strong and sure and pure. As if the thing happening as Ben _(finally, Ben)_ fell to the ground wasn’t worth the earth itself breaking in half. She could have called for him but it would have been redundant to do so, Ben's mind slipping out of her consciousness, his body slipping out of her grasp, hitting the debris-strewn ground, falling, _falling._

Her fingers on his neck, still, and him still warm but hollow. Silence around, though the palace is breaking apart from the ground up. Sunlight, slow and tender, falling through the cracks above, touching cold stone around them for the first time in eons.

“Be with me,” her voice barely hers. “Be with me, Ben. You came back before. You came. You came for me. Be with me.”

An edge of a smile, the smile she only saw once, still lingering. A peace there never was before. A promise he made with no words the last time their bond was connected. I am with you. You are not alone. I know you.

The Force skewed, unbalanced, broken, with only one side remaining. All of the Jedi within her. All of the Sith gone with Palpatine, with Kylo Ren. And whoever the man in front of her was when he... when...

“You can't be gone. I only just found you.”

He looks younger with the armour gone, the anger gone. The scar she gave him faded. Everything that’s Ben, that was Kylo Ren, dissolving in front of her until only a flutter of life which was his - which she now recognises as Leia's - remains. Just under Rey's own chest.

The guilt comes but it’s jagged and unclear. He gave his life to her. For her. It’s beating inside her, a small sun, a heart of a sparrow, a smouldering ember. The guilt is pain and she wants to follow it, as if it would bring her to him. She can’t. Not now. Not after everything. He came to her.

She’s holding his hand now, fingers together, and there is a moment she can’t see him. Only the ground, the dark stones generations of Sith walked on throughout all history. He’s gone, she thinks, a broken shallow thought and she sees the life ahead, without him, without _Ben_ , and yes there are people with her, her newfound family, and it’s a good life, but he is what made it technicolour. Now, black and white. It stretches ahead of her callously, the truth of it calling to her, because now she knows that he did turn, he stood with her, time and time again he stood with her and now he is _gone._

The Force rights itself. Snaps back, stretched too far and too thin. It’s in her heart, and in the space below it where Ben’s life resides, and in the tips of her fingers clutching to his skin, and then it’s in him, and the bond thrums and thumps hesitantly, then assuredly, and then Ben opens his eyes.

“Ben?” Her voice a whine not a voice, a sound not a word, unhuman. He’s sitting up, movement sluggish and bit through with ache. He shouldn’t be moving, she wants to say, but she doesn’t because the life she saw ahead dissolves the way dreams do, remains nothing but a lingering taste, and because Ben is moving, and the skin under her fingers grows warmer.

He calls her name and it’s a sound she wants to die to. “Rey,” he says, unbelieving, confused. Looks at her, at their joint hands. Looks around at the crumbling walls of the palace. The Force fizzles around them, protective and furious, and there is nothing between them and there never will be again. She’s tracing his skin, his face, the lines of his eyes. The blood on his lips. Ben.

The moment shatters as the Force leaves them, sounds of collapse returning tenfold. Ben is holding her to his body desperately, breath a shudder of broken syllables. I thought I lost you, she knows he means. I was lost. Don’t ever leave me again. “I won’t,” she answers, steadier than she thought possible. Their bond sings with tentative, cautious joy.

Rey knows they need to get away from there while the walls still stand. Some remaining strands of sense push her away from Ben, force her to ignore the pang of pain crossing his expression. She clutches his hand tightly, so much bigger than hers, pulls him to his feet and he stumbles, coughs up blood. They need to hurry. A large, heavy piece of the entablature falls too close to them. She can feel Finn is near, and struggles towards the crumbling face of wall behind what used to be the Sith throne. He’s got the Falcon. Safety is near. She just needs to get Ben there, drag his un-cooperating body with her. Red light of Exogol filters through the walls like blood. She’s moving forward on adrenaline alone.

Finn knew where she was, somehow, and that she was alive, but he did not know about Ben. He pulls a blaster out as they approach, hesitates seeing their hands griped together tightly but still trains it on him. “If anyone touches him, I swear I’ll murder all of you,” Rey snarls and Finn flinches but puts the blaster away, reaches out to help. She doesn’t let him. Ben is hers. Hers to care for. The life inside her chest grows stronger.

They don’t say a word as they walk through the Falcon, people whose names she can’t care to remember rejoicing in the win. Was it a win? It was the end, of something, but came so close to a loss. She did lose. But he came back.

There’s a room in the back of the Falcon, barely a narrow bed and storage for spare parts. She sits Ben on it, closes the door behind them, locks it. She wouldn’t risk him. Afraid to let him sleep, afraid to let herself, but her body is broken and his must too be damaged. He lays down carefully. She lays down by him, close enough to touch but not touching.

He reaches a hand to her, and she reaches back, takes it. Their bond is fragile but growing stronger by the moment. She wonders if they’re both dead.

***

They sleep apart from each other, bodies curling towards the middle of the bed where their fingers are intertwined. Rey can feel the steady vibration that is the Falcon’s engines reverberating through floors and through walls. It calms her. She slept a dead sleep, a dreamless sleep. Ben is looking at her, not yet really awake, too large for the space they occupy but fitting into it seamlessly.

She doesn’t know how long they slept.

Ben reaches out with the hand not holding hers, unhurriedly, pushes hair away from her face, presses the lines of worry away. The places on him where before was blood are yellowing angrily. Lip swollen. They both smell like death and like years gained over a single night, but neither cares. Rey thinks she might be crying. Ben is looking at her in that way he always does, with wonder and with curiosity, like she’s something to learn or a puzzle to solve, but there is something else there now, too. Something she thought she saw on the Supremacy, and then on Kef Bir, and although she'd never had it directed at her before she thinks it’s love.

“You came for me.”

The words aren’t needed but she wants to speak to him, really speak to him for once without the war between them, without sides.

“I did.”

And the exhaustion and fear catch up to her like a wave with no outlet and he must see it because he holds her close. It’s a delicate touch but with no hesitation, one hand in her hair and one around her waist, as he buries his face into the crook of her neck. Exhales.

“You were gone. You... I saw our future again, but it was different and you weren’t there.” She thinks he says _I’m here_ but it’s too quiet to tell. “You were unarmed for kriff’s sake, what were you thinking?” she’s pushing him away, “where is your lightsabre?”

“I threw it into the ocean.”

Out of all the stupid things... “the ocean?”

“On the Endor Moon.”

All the rage and exasperation she’s ever felt towards him rolls into this moment, and she wants to hit him or throw him out an airlock. “You threw your only weapon into the bloody ocean? What if Luke didn’t give me the second sabre? What if we didn’t connect? You could have died! You could have...” she stutters, reaching out again, holding him closer, tears falling hot and free, “you died. You idiot. You left me. You were supposed to be with me.”

He’s holding her and soothing, repeating _I’m here_ , _I’m right here with you_ and she thinks he’s crying, too. “Ben,” she says, and he answers _yes_ and she says it again and again until he’s smiling that same smile he had before he _fell_ and she’s kissing him and the Force thrums between them, finally satisfied.

There is a knock on the door to their cabin, and she knows that it’s Finn. Her body aches, a visceral thing, getting away from Ben and up from the comfort of the bed.

Finn looks ashen, and tired, and pale. She knows they must have lost a lot of people, good people, and she doesn’t know if she wants to find out who.

She closes the door behind her, leans against it.

“So... Kylo Ren...”

“Ben,” she corrects, sterner that she’d want to. She knows Finn has valid reasons to be worried. He didn’t know about their bond. Nobody knew. She too would be asking the same questions if the roles were reversed, and she probably wouldn’t be so patient with it. But she can’t help the protective rage within her at the simplest sign of danger towards the man in the room behind them. She lost him once. Won’t happen again. Not if she has any say in it.

“Alright. Ben,” Finn cringes at the name, “he’s on the ship with us.”

“He saved my life.”

Finn pauses at this, thinly vailed fear and confusion apparent on his face, but he doesn’t question her.

“Where do you want to go?”

Leia is dead, she knows. The Rebel Alliance victorious and doesn’t need them to go back to the base. There is nowhere to go. “Tatooine,” she says, the first place which springs to mind.

She pauses before she goes back into the room, tries to pay him all the mind she can despite her body’s call. Back to bed. Back to Ben.

“What did you want to tell me?”

She’s thinking of the quick sand and he knows immediately. “Will you train me?”

It needs no explanation, the words itself enough. That’s how he knew where to find her. That’s how she could feel him. “Of course.”

Ben is asleep when she gets back into bed. They sleep the whole way to Tatooine.

***

She’s burying the twin lightsabres in the sand, bending the Force so they fall further down into the earth. There are no bodies to bury, for Leia or for Luke, after both had become one with the Force. Ben is standing by her.

They’d been here for a week, living at the old Lars homestead, abandoned since Luke had left. Finn and Poe had logistics to figure out but they came back to leave the Falcon to her, to _them_ , a legacy of his life more than of hers. Ben is still healing, the new scars upon his body from falling down the broken earth on Exogol forming slowly. She’s still healing too, with new nightmares in which he is gone.

They’re together now.

“Who are you?” a voice asks, and she responds Rey, as she always would, but they want to know more. Rey Skywalker, she says, a name long forgotten here on the desert planet apart from the Empire. “Nobody’s been here for years,” the woman says. They explain it’s an old family home and the woman leaves unperturbed, the enquiry due more to curiosity than worry from the start.

They’ll leave soon. Go somewhere green where the past isn’t alive. Somewhere near her family, where bridges can be slowly rebuilt. Where she can train Finn. Where Ben can reconnect with Chewie. They’ll have to find kyber crystals, build themselves new weapons. Travel, maybe. Together.

In the moments when the twin suns set Ray thinks she sees Luke and Leia, finally united, watching them with content. If Ben sees them too, he doesn’t say. Maybe they know he’s not ready just yet.

Ben holds her every night, and tells her that she’s everything.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been over a week since I watched the movie and that last scene is still in my mind, so I thought I'd write a little something for everyone else who's heartbroken by it.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! I've not written Star Wars stuff before, so it was new and kind of exciting, although the subject matter is depressing.
> 
> If you liked, and would like to check out my original stuff I'm on wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/Marigold91


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